What's on TV: Wednesday, September 20

A good-natured little show, this one, and a glowing endorsement of Nippers Surf Lifesaving Clubs, that quintessentially Australian activity teaching kids how to handle themselves in the ocean and beyond. The South Maroubra Nippers are a particularly multicultural group, and tonight we meet Omar, from Egypt and competing in his first U12 carnival; Charlotte, who has Indigenous heritage; and Tyler, whose brother is former Sydney Swans footballer Nick Davis and who tonight gets to meet his idol, ironman and former Nipper Ali Day, come to put the boys through their paces. Tyler is shorter than the other boys, but makes up for that with determination, perhaps inherited from his parents – he also plays a zillion other sports as well as saxophone and piano. Anyone who hated swimming sports as a child will sympathise with the nerves these kids are feeling on carnival day, but life isn't always a beach, is it? Annabel Ross

pay Biketacular

Discovery Turbo, 8.30pm

In this Biketacular special, a host of motoring journalists, mechanics and rev heads (including several familiar faces from the Turbo roster) count down the Top 20 motorcycles of all time. It's an eclectic mix, encompassing classic road, touring and off-road bikes, a futuristic electric bike based on the machines from Tron: Legacy, a bike built specifically to break land speed records that doesn't look like a bike at all, and other machines of historical and cultural importance. Speed, power, style, imagination and technical specs are all reasons to be nominated and the whole thing is salted with great moments from motorcycling history and our various hosts recounting their formative memories (many of which involve spectacular bingles). As befits the subject matter, the whole thing moves along at a brisk clip and, despite knowing nothing about motorcycles and having virtually no interest in them, I still had a lot of fun. Melinda Houston

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Bob's Burgers

Eleven, 9.30pm

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For the uninitiated, watching an episode of Bob's Burgers feels like the first time you watched The Simpsons all those years ago. Delightfully kooky family, inappropriate, bang-on jokes and crudely animated, it shares much in common with Matt Groening's creation and The Family Guy, only with far more sexually ambiguous characters, and therein lies a lot of the fun. This episode has little to do with the titular restaurant run by the Belcher family; Ex Mach Tina is all about oldest daughter Tina; smart, awkward and voiced by male comedian Dan Mintz. An ankle injury forces her to send a robot to school in her place, and it's through the robot that she finally connects with her long-term crush, the lisping, dancing Jimmy jnr. But will their fledgling relationship pass the real-life test? And will she be able to overcome Jimmy's woeful "Mus-oems"? (not songs; poems set to music). Stacked with zinging one-liners: "You look like an ethnic Steve Martin," quips one customer when patriarch Bob takes up the banjo – it's a mood-boosting half-hour and incisive skewering of modern life. Annabel Ross

movie The Guard (2011)

SBS, 2.20am (Thursday)

The long arm of the law finds distinct dimensions in John Michael McDonagh's debut feature, a black comedy that never neglects its spiritual unease. Looking at the world with wry, welcome disbelief, Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is a sergeant in the Irish Garda whose patch is a small town in the country's west. Mocking of authority – including his own – Gerry pays little heed to the laws he enforces, hiring escorts and pilfering narcotics from a dealer's car crash, yet he's not corruptible. When a group of philosophical drug smugglers, played by Liam Cunningham and Mark Strong, cross his turf, Gerry teams up with an FBI agent, Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle). The two blithely serve it up to each other, and Gleeson, who always has an extra gear when playing an Irishman, finds a fluency in his bulk and a breathtaking directness in his observations. Craig Mathieson